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More than 42,000 people watched the opening of the DJ's first show from 6am yesterday morning on the Orange, Wanadoo, AOL, MSN and Hotmail portals as part of a week-long campaign promoting the new show. This figure does not include the number of people watching the live streaming on Virgin's . 

The show kicked off with Bon Jovi's 'Keep the Faith' and featured actor James Nesbitt, who called in to clear up any misunderstanding about a sighting of him picking his nose.

A promotion called Who's calling Christian?, reminiscent of O'Connell's Bounty Hunter on previous home Xfm, has been created to challenge listeners to approach celebrities and ask them to call in during the show for a quick interview. Listeners will vote online for their favourite call, with the winner getting a £20,000 prize and the celebrity winner getting £10,000 for a charity of their choice.

David Andrews, marketing director at Virgin Radio, said: "There's been a lot of speculation about how the first 'Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show' would run. The massive listener response to this morning's show just confirms that he's the UK's top DJ talent, who can pull in a massive national audience here on Virgin Radio."

O'Connell has brought his entire Sony Award-winning 'Xfm Breakfast Show' team with him for the show, including producer Roque Segarde Vieto, newsreader Chris Smith and assistant producer Brian Murphy.

This week also sees Virgin Radio and Heart competing to win over new breakfast show listeners as they each launch ad campaigns.

Heart FM is spending £1.5m on an eight-week run of TV and cinema ads for its Jamie Theakston-fronted breakfast show.

Virgin is using a four-week outdoor campaign with posters at Primesight and JCDecaux sites, including 96-sheet billboards and six-sheet posters, featuring O'Connell against the word "best" in white on a red background.

Xfm has already run a campaign promoting O'Connell's replacement, Lauren Laverne.

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